In the design and manufacturing of products, particularly (though not exclusively) in high technology, it is important for product manufacturers to identify all of the elements of the “whole product”. The “whole product” is a marketing term, which for purposes of this description is defined as a generic product augmented by everything that is needed for the customer to have a compelling reason to buy the generic product. The “generic product” is the actual item that is shipped to the customer, i.e., what the customer is primarily interested in acquiring. As illustrated in FIG. 1, the whole product typically augments the generic product with various types of services and information, such as procedures, product installation, customer training, technical support, and additional hardware and/or software, etc. To facilitate discussion, references to “the product” in this document shall be understood to refer to the generic product, unless stated otherwise.
An analysis which attempts to identify all of the elements of a whole product and any corresponding gaps in a company's business plan is called a whole product “gap analysis”. In general, a whole product gap analysis is designed to answer the question, “What will it take to enable the target customer to be successful in their environment, throughout the cycle of choosing, deploying, operating and, where appropriate, upgrading a particular technology or product?” and to identify the specific deliverables, and their owners, required to bring about this outcome. Performing a thorough whole product gap analysis before a product is initially released can be critical to a company's success in the marketplace. Failure to identify key elements of the whole product and inadvertently omitting such items from the company's business plans can result in loss of customers, and therefore, loss of revenue.
Many product manufacturers have not yet even realized the importance of performing a whole product analysis. Those who have typically have done so only in a very unstructured way and to a very limited extent. For example, currently a limited gap analysis may be done by one or two people (e.g., a product manager and/or a marketing person) simply attempting to think of all of the required elements of the whole product and writing them down in some form of checklist or business plan. This approach makes it very easy to overlook important “deliverables”, i.e., items that must be “delivered” or completed within the company at various stages in a product's lifecycle (from initial concept through delivery to the customer and beyond), in order to provide a whole product. Moreover, the current approach is time consuming, tedious and generally not consistently repeatable from product to product. Furthermore, it is sometimes difficult to identify which individuals within the company are or should be responsible for providing particular deliverables (“owners”) during the development and manufacturing process. Additionally, it is often difficult to recognize and accommodate the various whole product interdependencies that may emerge during the evolution and extension of an integrated product portfolio.